Making Butter

 

Making Butter

Claire Kelly

When Mum lived with her Mum and Dad, they had their own milk and made their own butter.

The cows were milked by hand morning and evening. The hot milk was strained in a special strainer to catch the dirt and hair from the milk. The milk was then put into a separator to take the cream from the milk.

When they had enough cream, it was put into a steel churn and it took a lot of turning the handle to make butter from the cream. You would know when the sound changed from smooth to wet and noisy, that you had butter and buttermilk in the churn.

Nanny used the buttermilk to make bread. Mum put the butter into a bowl (enemal) and clapped the butter between two wooden clappers to get more liquid out of it, then added some salt and shaped it into a rectangle. With the clappers, she could also make small rolls of butter too.

It tasted strong and salty and had a good yellow colour.

She is from Bawnmore in Galway.

Original Writing